There is a new combat analysis site in town, and its name is Warcraft Logs. While the site is currently in open Alpha and will likely not be officially released until Warlords of Draenor, it still has a ton of functionality and is already a great tool for evaluating logs.

Since log analyzers aren’t entirely intuitive to use, I’ll be writing a guide on how to use Warcraft Logs to analyze and improve both your own performance and that of your entire raid (just like I did with World of Logs).

The guide is in its beginning stages, currently I just cover the basics – how to upload a log and a breakdown of the log UI. Soon I’ll be adding sections on how to analyze individual raiders and how to use logs to find out what’s happening on boss fights when things go wrong.

I’ve added the first two sections to my guide section, please check it out and let me know if you have any feedback.

I’m a big fan of WoW stats and analyzing logs, as you can probably tell by how often I write about the topic.

Recently, a new site for WoW combat log analysis was introduced – Warcraft Logs! Developed by Kihra, Warcraft Logs looks like an amazing supplement to, and eventual successor to World of Logs. It just entered open alpha this week, so there are some bugs and features that haven’t been implemented yet, but it’s looking good so far.

I’m pretty excited about this new site. The WoL devs have mostly been just keeping the lights on for the last year or so. Big bugs get fixed (eventually), but there haven’t been any new features implemented or improvements in a long time. Warcraft Logs seems set on giving raiders a better analysis resource.

The logs are pretty sleek looking. The overview page gives you the basic information – damage done, healing done, damage taken by ability. You can very easily constrain the time range to look at a specific part of the fight by clicking and dragging to select a time frame on the top chart.

The Damage Done panel is similar to WoL, but has some nice improvements. If you look at Damage Done by Ability, the chart at the top very nicely maps out when and how much damage each ability is doing. Mousing over the ability name will show you the breakdown of how much damage each target took from that ability. Clicking on the ability will graph out uptimes. Mousing over the blue bar will break down hits, crits, and ticks. And, my absolute favourite feature on the Warcraft Logs damage screen – pets abilities are included on the same page as the player! No more having to look at your pet(s) and yourself separately – all the abilities are in one place.

The Buffs and Debuffs screen isn’t the most user friendly right now, but it is going to be redesigned soon™.

The Deaths page is simple and easy to use. In addition to a graph of the player’s health level, it includes the log entries of all damage and healing taken since the last time the player was overhealed. Along the left side, where you can see all deaths there are a few neat features, like the icons for the last 3 sources of damage are shown. I believe the time in brackets is supposed to indicate the time between the last heal received and the death, though it doesn’t look entirely accurate right now. Improvements planned for this view include showing survival cooldowns by default.

One feature of Warcraft Logs I’m stoked for is the Resources pane. Unfortunately, resources were removed from the combatlog so this panel isn’t working at the moment, but the Blues have said they would be added back soon. When that happens, the resources pane will let you see mana/energy/focus/rage levels of players throughout the fight. This is particularly interesting for healers.

It’s really easy to create or join a guild using Warcraft logs, and you’re allowed to belong to more than one guild on a single account, which is nice. There’s also a Personal Logs option so you can log LFR or Flex or target dummy practice without cluttering up your guild’s page.

There are a few important features that are not available yet, but are planned. For me, the most important of these are an expression editor and a rankings system. Lack of these things is the main thing that will keep my raid running both WoL and WL for the time being. After all, rankings are half the fun. Once these, and the other planned features are implemented, Warcraft Logs will be an amazing resource. It’s already well on its way there.

Once Warcraft Logs gets past the alpha stage, I’ll likely write up a proper guide on how to use it to analyse logs. In the meantime, you should give it a try for your next raid.